Effort isn’t the point, impact is. If you solve the problem in three seconds but have the guts to share it with me, it’s still art. And if you move ten thousand pounds of granite but the result doesn’t connect with me, I’m sorry for your calluses, but you haven’t made art, at least not art for me.
~ Seth Godin
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Still nursing my achilles from sprints. Really didn’t feel like I was running that hard… must have not warmed up sufficiently.
We think we understand the rules when we become adults, but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.
~ David Lynch
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Solid couple of hours at my favorite local gym, Le Yard. I don’t “love” yard work, but I very much prefer this free gym membership to any other sort of “go and exercise.” Tomorrow: walking (still recovering achilles from sprints)
At least, it feels intimate to me.
Reading is letting someone else model the world for you. This is an act of intimacy. When the author is morose, you become morose. When he is mirthful, eventually you may share it. And after finishing a very good book one is driven a little mad, forced to return from a world that no one nearby has witnessed.
~ Simon Sarris
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A couple weeks ago I returned from a wonderful but all too brief trip. I returned with some new perspectives having had a bunch of great conversations about what it is I’m trying to do (on my blog, in the emails I send, in my projects… heck, with my life at large.) I ended up doing a bunch of work trying to make things clearer (saying things more clearly, better storytelling) and overhauling a lot of back-end functionality. A few things you may find interesting…
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We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
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I was reminded we have access to our school district’s track. 8 laps with 100m dashes. Unfortunately after 3 dashes one achilles’ tendon said ‘stop that’. But still, if that best, 6’32”-mile pace is right… I’m stunned!
Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1100 words
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There is a time and place for maximum effort—yes, that’s a Deadpool reference—and there’s a time and place for stillness and calm. I’m fascinated by the relationship and interaction between physicality (as movement versus stillness) and mentality (as agitation versus calmness.) I’ve had transformational experiences at both extremes of physicality, with mental calmness. I do get mentally agitated. But I fear that too many people experience calmness far too rarely, possibly never.
This often means working more thoughtfully, and maybe even more slowly. Slow work is not unproductive work. What we lose in speed we more than make up for in deliberateness—as well as in undistracted attention, a critical factor of productivity.
~ Chris Bailey from, The productivity payoffs of a calm mind – Chris Bailey
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Sometimes people ask me about Stoicism, and I suck at explaining it. Thinking and writing about calmness today, I’m struck that I should probably mention eudaimonia (euĚŻ-daiĚŻ-mon-Ăa). Eudaimonia is a key value Stoicism advocates striving for.
[…] is a state of being and consciousness that is consistent with the active, effective activity of ideal agency and in general is characterized by the calm (equanimity; tranquility) that comes from the absence of further moral struggle and the absence of retrospective regret or prospective alarm about things outside one’s control, together with the confidence that comes from the effortless persistence of moral purpose.
~ Lawrence Becker from, A New Stoicism p91
2.5 millenia later… calmness, equanimity, tranquility?
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I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.
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Our nearby short, flat lollipop loop. Tomorrow: Discussion of running some dashes on the track.
It’s easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.
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To this day, if I realize I’m in a downward spiral I bring my attention to my next decision. (“Realize” being the important word there. I am too often actually in a downward spiral without realizing it is so.) Left foot, or right foot next? Take a nap, or continue what I’m doing? What’s the smallest next thing I can do, which would be a positive? Maybe the best thing I can do is to simply cease everything and pause.
Bodies start to hurt when they aren’t moved enough, but also because when they are moved, some parts aren’t moving with ease. This then makes it harder to move enough, and our movements get more diminished, immobility and pain arises, and we think it’s all inevitable.
~ Katy Bowman from, Book Excerpt: Rethink Your Position – Nutritious Movement
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I find it empowering to know that making small, simple decisions about movement can profoundly affect my overall health and mobility. I’m not taking Bowman’s word for it though (she does have lots of great things to say about movement) I’ve simply taken note of what happens. Sometimes (often?) the better, small choice is the slightly more difficult now option. As Jerzy Gregorek put it, “easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” Choose wisely.
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3 miles out and back. Got a little cardio in on the steeper bits. Tomorrow: Running (probably?)
Any sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from malice.
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15 circuits of good ‘ol pushups, squats, and hanging leg-raises.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therein to be content.
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There is no piece of straw incapable of breaking the camel’s back. Because there’s nothing particularly interesting about the final piece of straw, it’s the total mass. Over the past week I’ve been attacking my lists in a sort of upside down fashion. There are some big, low-priority things sitting at the bottom of my lists for some time. They’ve resisted my finely-honed urge to summarily delete them; each time I consider them I remain sure I want to actually do them. None the less, I see them and I know they’re there and they weigh upon my mind.
Left unchecked, every life flows away from higher aims and towards the path of least resistance. Daily practices can help stem this slide. But staying on course requires check-ins that are too big to do every day, and too important to only accomplish monthly (or yearly).
~ Brett McKay from, «https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/habits/sunday-firesides-theres-only-so-far-you-can-get-off-track-in-a-week/»
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Last weekend, as I often do, I did a review and decided to focus on those big, low-priority items. And to my surprise, I’ve been springing out of bed at 530—the normally targeted time, but which is often a struggle—and smashing these items in multi-hour dashes. Crossing them off one by one has been sublime. The magic seems to be the combination of going to bed knowing I’m going to start tomorrow working on those things which are actually on my mind, and knowing that I’ve set myself a specific window of days to smash this stuff.
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Walked to my fave cafe for lunch. I’m not sure I’ve every accurately tracked this walk before. I was thinking it was just short of 2 miles; apparently I’ve been underestimating. Regardless, happy to walk 4.5 miles to see familiar faces and have a yummy sandwich.
We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.
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